


i'm just feeling low, feeling low

by Macremae



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Movie Night, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Sharing a Bed, sleepover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 00:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16378154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macremae/pseuds/Macremae
Summary: Vanessa is not allowed to sleep over in Hermann's room anymore. Now, she has to sleep in Karla's.This might be a problem.





	i'm just feeling low, feeling low

**Author's Note:**

> so this fic is based off of a couple of things. the dialogue between hermann and vanessa is an actual conversation my best friend vincent and i had while watching crimson peak, except he's bi instead of gay, but i'm still a lesbian. he's also my ex-boyfriend. long story. the femslash plot is based off of "she" by dodie and "sleepover" by hayley kiyoko, because those songs belong to sapphics and no one else. please listen to them while reading for Maximum Pain, then find me on tumblr at bae-science.

Vanessa doesn’t really see it coming, but she’s about sixteen now, so it was really only a matter of time.

She’s sleeping over at Hermann’s house again, watching _Halloween_ and grabbing his arm like her life depends on it. Scary movies are _totally_ not her thing, but Hermann likes them, so she deals. Besides, he’s got a pillow over his eyes and is currently making a noise like a birthing otter.

Mike Meyers leaps out at them, and Vanessa screeches; she dives under the blanket and digs her nails further into Hermann’s arm, who squawks and yanks it away.

“Stop cutting off my bloody circulation!” he says from behind the pillow, rubbing at the marks she’s left. Vanessa peeks out from underneath and sticks her tongue out.

“I’m frightened!” she replies, and smooths her hair from where it was ruffled by the blanket. “You’re the one who wanted to watch this in the first place!”

“I told you we could pick something else.”

“Yeah, and then you added the phrase, ‘if you’re a little bitch’.”

Hermann snorts. “It’s not even that scary, ‘Nessa.”

“There is a guy,” she shouts, gesturing wildly at the screen, “currently murdering people with tons of blood and gore!”

“Oh what, are you squeamish about blood now?”

“Well I kinda can’t be, seeing as what happens every month--”

“Vanessa, that’s disgusting!”

“You led me into it!”

“I did not!”

She sticks her tongue out again and punches him in his bony shoulder. “You did too, you sanctimonious bitch! I will break you! I will eat your babies!”

Hermann makes a face. “You’d eat your own children?”

“Assuming a little much there, sport? I wouldn’t marry you if someone held a gun to my head.”

“What about tax benefits?” he says. Vanessa thinks for a moment.

“Hmm. Okay. Tax benefits is a whole other category.”

“We could scam the government.”

Her eyes light up. “I love scamming the government! Oh Hermie, you know me so well.”

He shoves her with his foot and rolls his eyes. “Yes, unfortunately. God save my soul while I do it.”

Vanessa wriggles out of the blanket and lays her head in his lap, propping her legs up on the arm of the couch. “I think I’d make an excellent serial killer,” she says lavishly. “No one could catch me! They never suspect the pretty ones.”

Hermann raises an eyebrow. “What about me?”

“Like I said: they never suspect the _pretty_ ones.”

“Shove off,” snaps Hermann, smacking her forehead. “They also never suspect the cripples.”

“Isn’t, like, the biggest stereotype for a villain the guy with a cane?”

“The master manipulator, sure, but not the serial killer.”

“What if they run away? You couldn’t go after them.”

“I’d hide a gun in my cane and just shoot them with it.”

“Oooh, spicy!” she squeals, kicking her legs. “Very fresh, quite fun, quite sexy. And you’d gain their trust by faking a degenerative disease.”

“Exactly,” he nods pleasedly. “I’d be excellent at it. No one would suspect.”

“Here’s my question,” says Vanessa, fully ignoring the movie now, “what would your name be?”

Hermann looks at her oddly. “My… name?”

“Yeah? Like a stripper name, but it’s what the police call you. Mine would be ‘The Scarlet Demon’.”

He thinks on this for half a minute, tapping his chin with his hand. “Er. The Cane-iac?”

Vanessa stares up at him with wide, horrified eyes. “Fuck you.”

“I’m just saying--”

“A bloody pun, Hermann? Are you shitting me? Go to jail!”

“Well, if I were an actual serial killer--”

“That’s-- that’s not the point!”

He frowns. “Then what is the point, Vanessa? Do tell me, what is the point?”

Vanessa kicks her legs up in the air again, then flings them back onto the couch. Hermann, she decides, does not Get It. “The point,” she explains, “is that your puns are terrible, and you should stop making them immediately. See what I said before: go to jail. Pretty please and thank you, my darling dear.”

He rolls his eyes so far back into his head she can see the whites. “Only if you agree to stop with the pet names. It makes people assume things.”

She snorts. “Let them assume. The day I date a man is the day I wear blue mascara.”

“So… Friday?”

Smacking a hand over his mouth, she tells Hermann, “Shush. Hush. Watch your stupid bloody movie.”

“In which sense do you mean the word ‘bloody’ in?”

“The anatomical, of course. I’m not a swine, Hermann.”

They watch the rest of the movie.

When it’s done, Hermann folds up the blanket into a perfect square and sets it neatly in the wicker bin next to the television, while Vanessa collects their cups. They traipse upstairs to the kitchen, dump the dishes in the sink, and walk out into the living room where Dr. and Mrs. Gottlieb are sitting.

“Hullo Dr. Gottlieb, ma’am,” Vanessa says, folding her hands just so in the way that men like Hermann’s father find acceptable. “Thank you for letting me stay over. The movie finished, so Hermann and I are going to bed, now.”

“Blankets and sheets are in the hall closet,” says Mrs. Gottlieb, not looking up from her knitting. “Have a nice night, you two.”

“Wait,” Lars interjects, putting down his business magazine. “Lorna. They seem a little old now to be sleeping in the same room, don’t you think?”

Lorna ponders this, her eyes darting away from her knitting to look over Vanessa. “Hmm,” she says. “Hmm. I suppose.”

“Then it’s settled,” says Lars firmly. “Vanessa, you can sleep with Karla in her room. Karla?” he calls upstairs.

At the words “sleep with Karla,” Vanessa goes bright red. They can’t know. They can’t. How could they possibly know? They couldn’t, ergo Lars has no idea what he’s doing, ergo this is just one horrible nightmare that’s happening completely by chance. Ergo she’s screwed.

See, the thing is. Well. The thing is.

The thing is that Vanessa is horribly, totally, madly in love with Karla Gottlieb, and has been ever since the start of Secondary School when she saw her in that frothy pink dress at the class dance, her hair soft and falling gently, her lips pink and bright, and realized that no man could ever compare to the angel in front of her.

Ergo. Ergo something or other.

Anyway, feelings aside, she’s totally fucked, because Vanessa knows for a fact that Karla’s floor is wooden, so they’re going to have to _share the bed_. And she doesn’t know how she can cope with that.

What if they touch? What if she has a nightmare? What if they accidentally drift together in the night, two lost souls searching in the dark, and wrap their small arms around each other in a tender embrace?

Oh God, Vanessa is going to lose her mind.

Karla comes downstairs, eyes already sleepy and hair mussed from running her fingers through it, and seems to freeze when she sees Vanessa. Fantastic. She hates her.

“What is it?” she asks. Lars frowns.

“Vanessa is far too old to be sharing a room with Hermann while she spends the night. She will be sleeping with you instead. Please get your room ready.”

Karla goes a strange, pale color (she hates her, she hates her, oh God she totally hates Vanessa fuck her _life_ ) and nods meekly. “Yes sir,” she says, and looks at Vanessa with something strange in her eyes. “C’mon, ‘Ness. We’ll get the spare blanket.”

Then she scurries back up the stairs, and Hermann looks at Vanessa, and the world comes to a fiery, terrible end.

♥.·:*¨¨*:·.♥.·:*:·.♥.·:*¨¨*:·.♥

Vanessa brushes her teeth and pulls her hair up and gets into her pyjamas as fast as she can. She’s fucking terrified, no shit Sherlock, but the faster she gets into bed, the faster she can fall asleep and wake up and forget about this whole thing.

While she’s changing, Karla undresses behind her, and Vanessa wants so badly to peek over her shoulder and see. There’s a mirror beside her, and just out of the corner of her eye she can see the pale slope of Karla’s back. It’s stark white in the dim light, softly patterned with freckles and leading down to a wiry waist and long legs. Her underwear is pink. Oh God, her underwear is fucking _pink_ , that’s so fucking _cute_ and also a little bit hot? Vanessa wants to run her hands down Karla’s legs, feel her delicate ankles and bony knees and kiss her concave stomach. She wants to bury her head (well, as best she can considering the size) in her chest and just stay there for a million years.

Karla pulls a t-shirt over her head and takes her long hair to the side to begin braiding. Her fingers are long and slim, and move delicately among her dark brown hair. Vanessa loves her brown hair and brown eyes and sharp features like a glittering knife. She loves her shy smile, like she almost has to apologize for being so pretty. She loves pretty much everything, really.

“Am I good to turn around?” Vanessa asks like she doesn’t know the answer already. Karla startles and turns, her face going pink.

“Oh, yes,” she replies, her eyes fixated on Vanessa’s shirt (it says “Nationalize Greggs”. Hermann gave it to her. She loves him). “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” says Vanessa, and then they just stand there awkwardly for about a minute, while neither of them gather any idea of what to say. Finally, Vanessa says, “Do you wanna… get in bed?”

“Oh! Er. Yes. Let’s,” says Karla, and pulls back the covers to climb in. 

Vanessa sticks to her side, lying on the very edge so as not to touch anything, and clutches her hands to her chest. She can barely breathe she’s so anxious, but Karla is quiet beside her, so she counts her breathes and tries to fall asleep.

Eventually, she does, but not before Karla’s leg sneaks around to lay over hers.

♥.·:*¨¨*:·.♥.·:*:·.♥.·:*¨¨*:·.♥

It’s early morning when she wakes, the window open and sending a soft breeze through the bedroom. The air is sweet and cool, and Vanessa snuggles under the covers more to block out the chill. There’s something warm beneath her; Hermann’s heating pad, maybe? Either way it’s very nice, and the place where her head is pillowed rises and falls in rhythmic time. The cord is wrapped around her thigh, although it doesn’t feel nearly as uncomfortable as Vanessa thought it would.

Wait.

This isn’t Hermann’s room.

 _Motherfucker_.

Vanessa’s eyes fly open just in time to see Karla’s do the same, and they give twin yelps as they sit bolt upright and jerk away, the blanket flying back around them. Karla immediately begins an apologetic ramble, but Vanessa is a little more preoccupied with finding the nearest bathtub and drowning herself.

“Karla,” she says, trying to cut her off, “Karla. Karla. Karla!”

Karla’s tirade grinds to a halt, and she stares at Vanessa with wide, frightened eyes. A small, “Yes?” creeps out of her mouth.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” says Vanessa firmly. “It’s cool. Just forget it ever happened, okay?”

“For-- Forget about it?” asks Karla, and there’s almost something wistful in her voice. Vanessa nods.

“Yeah-- humans do it all the time. It was cold in your room, we huddled; totally normal. Just let it go, yeah?”

Karla works her jaw, then nods quickly. “Yes. Right idea; all perfectly fine. Let’s ignore it.”

Vanessa looks away, pulling the covers up to her chest. “And never, ever tell Hermann?”

She goes pale again. “Oh God. Please, never tell him.”

“Right.”

“Good.”

“Excellent.”

“Okay.”

There’s a long beat of silence where they both don’t look at each other, red rising in their faces. Vanessa sneaks a look from under the curtain of her hair and finds her eyes meeting Karla’s, so she hurriedly looks away. She clears her throat.

“Breakfast, then?”

Karla nods. “Yes. Let’s wake my brother and make toast.”

“Toast? Really? No waffles or pancakes or anything?” Vanessa manages to shoot her a grin despite the awkwardness filling the room. “Sounds pretty boring if you ask me.”

Karla laughs, and it’s the most beautiful sound in the world. “Alright, then. Whatever you like.”

So they put on their dressing gowns and wake up Hermann and go downstairs to make toast or waffles or pancakes or anything, or something along the lines of that. And never, ever, speak of this again.


End file.
